China’s new leader Xi Jinping calls for ‘better life’ for the country

Everyone knew Xi Jinping would become China's new leader. Many wonder whether he will bring long-awaited political reforms.Everyone knew Xi Jinping would become China’s new leader. Many wonder whether he will bring long-awaited political reforms.

It was never a question of whether Vice-President Xi Jinping would emerge as the most powerful man in China, taking the helm of the country’s Communist Party.

That was a done deal, a matter settled long ago.

The question is, will Xi — who was named at a ceremony Thursday morning in Beijing — bring political reform?

The new leader pulled up short on making that promise, but did commit to fighting corruption and “fighting for a better life” for China’s 1.3 billion people.

“We must make every effort to solve these problems,” he said. “The whole party must stay on full alert.”

Xi is taking the reins of leadership at a time when the country is on a relentless rise, on schedule to overtake the U.S. economy as the world’s biggest within a decade. As a result, China’s power and influence will continue to grow — and so will its assertiveness.

Xi caused concern at the Great Hall of the People, where the world’s press had assembled, when he was nearly 40 minutes late.

But when he did arrive, he smiled warmly at what he called “our reporter friends,” and apologized.

His charm is a clear departure from his predecessor Hu Jintao, who was always expressionless and wooden. But political reform is likely to remain a difficult issue, just as it was for Hu.

“No one really knows,” whether Xi will bring a reformist agenda to his leadership, says Lynette Ong, associate professor of political science at the University of Toronto’s Munk Centre. “I have seen no indication that Xi has the drive or predisposition to change things fundamentally.”

Xi, 59, is the son of one-time Mao favourite Xi Zhongxun, the youngest member appointed to Mao’s cabinet in the 1950s. Because of that parentage, the new leader is known as a “princeling,” one of the new, young leaders whose parents were party greats.

Charles Burton, a China specialist at Brock University, reacted with disappointment at the new Standing Committee, the equivalent of a cabinet, saying he feared “a Brezhnev-like era with no meaningful reform of political and legal institutions.”

Others said that the world should temper its expectations.

“It’s not really about political vision,” says Kerry Brown, a former Beijing-based British diplomat who now teaches Chinese politics at Sydney University.

He cautions against thinking of Chinese politics in the same vein as U.S. politics. “This really is a collective thing. Think of it as a handover of management in a company.”

The comparison is apt, because the Chinese state continues to control massive swaths of the economy — an economy that is still growing at 7.5 per cent annually.

Most believe Xi and the Standing Committee members — all of them conservatives — will stay the course, at least for now, steering the state with caution. The party only just succeeded this year in cleaning up a corruption scandal that involved Chongqing secretary Bo Xilai, who was sacked after his wife was convicted of poisoning British businessman Neil Heywood. The scandal exposed corruption and decadence on a shocking scale.

But Xi is expected to bring something to Chinese leadership that his predecessor Hu never did: personality.

President Hu will exit his office as he entered, as an enigma to his own people and a dour and stiff emissary of China to the world.

“Xi will give a different face to the leadership, a different way of expressing itself; a bit more communicative, and a bit more outward looking,” said Brown, in a telephone interview from Beijing.

Not all of the communication has been pleasant. On a 2009 tour of Mexico, Xi commented from a podium that he had grown tired of “well-fed foreigners who have nothing better to do than to point their fingers at us.”

The remarks were reported around the world.

Xi begins his five-year term as secretary general of the party immediately. He will formally assume the presidency when parliament next meets in March.

But barring personal or state calamities, he will almost certainly get a second term and lead the country until 2022.

Xi’s appointment as chairman of the military commission marked a break from the recent tradition of retiring leaders holding onto the post for a transitional period to extend their influence, the Associated Press reported. It meant Hu would relinquish all positions of power, giving Xi broader leeway to consolidate his authority.

Xi, incoming Premier Li Keqiang and five other members of a newly trimmed Politburo Standing Committee — totalling seven now instead of nine — made their curtain call on stage in the Great Hall of the People.

It is the traditional way the party announces its new leaders to the nation and the world. Names are called and men in identical suits with carefully coiffed hair that is strikingly, uniformly dark, make their way on stage.

The announcement is the high point of the Chinese political season, the culmination of a once-every-five-years, week-long congress that is trumpeted with fanfare by state-controlled print and broadcast media.

The actual political mechanisms of China’s one-party state remain as opaque as ever. Precisely how all the selections and decision-making at the top gets done remains a mystery, even to the most seasoned of China-watchers.

But this year, more than at any time in recent memory, gossip and accusations of meddling have spilled into the open. The target has been retired 86-year-old president Jiang Zemin, who was reported to have been on life support earlier this year.

But clearly no longer: some members on the top committee are rumoured to have been manoeuvred there by Jiang’s persistent horse-trading.

Not so Xi and Li, who have been groomed for their positions for years.

New Standing Committee members besides Xi and Li include Zhang Dejiang, the party secretary for Chongqing; Zhang Gaoli, party secretary of Tianjin; Yu Zhengsheng, party secretary of Shanghai; Vice-Premier Wang Qishan; and the powerful chief of propaganda Liu Yunshan.